About Project Beacon by Google
Google is piloting a program where we send beacons to businesses with physical locations to make their venues more visible to customers with mobile devices. The program is currently free. Here is how it works...

Benefits
Beacons help mobile devices determine a user’s location more accurately. When a user’s smartphone has a better understanding of their location, you can unlock a wide range of new features, and set up your business to use location-related features across Google:

Keep in mindThe features available to your business depend on the number of users that visit your venue, visit durations, size of venue, and other factors. We can’t guarantee any particular feature will be available to your store.

RequirementsThe Project Beacon pilot is available to selected businesses in the US and UK.

In order to take part in the trial, you must receive a beacon from Google. If you're interested in receiving a beacon, fill out this interest form.

If you've already received a beacon, you can set it up by following the instructions enclosed in the box it came in, and completing this form.

How it worksThe beacon transmits a one-way code that’s unique to your venue. When a user visits your venue with location services on their device turned on, their phone can use the beacon signal in order to understand that it’s visiting your store. The beacon itself does not collect or store any information. It only provides a helpful signal to your customers’ phones.

We may ask users who’ve visited your venue to contribute reviews, such as star ratings, answers to quick questions, photos, and more. Once enough of your visitors’ phones have detected visits to your store, we’re able to turn on aggregated features such as Popular times for your venue’s Place Page.

The data shown in these products is based on anonymous, aggregated visit statistics. It’s not possible to tie a particular visit back to a particular individual. We use industry best practices to ensure the privacy of individual users.

Of course, you can choose not to participate after receiving a beacon. This won’t affect your business or change how it currently shows up on Google. But by setting up your beacon, you’ll be able to take advantage of a wide range of location-enabled features like real-time Popular times and visitor reviews.

About Project Beacon by Google
Google is piloting a program where we send beacons to businesses with physical locations to make their venues more visible to customers with mobile devices. The program is currently free. Here is how it works...

Benefits
Beacons help mobile devices determine a user’s location more accurately. When a user’s smartphone has a better understanding of their location, you can unlock a wide range of new features, and set up your business to use location-related features across Google:

Keep in mindThe features available to your business depend on the number of users that visit your venue, visit durations, size of venue, and other factors. We can’t guarantee any particular feature will be available to your store.

RequirementsThe Project Beacon pilot is available to selected businesses in the US and UK.

In order to take part in the trial, you must receive a beacon from Google. If you're interested in receiving a beacon, fill out this interest form.

If you've already received a beacon, you can set it up by following the instructions enclosed in the box it came in, and completing this form.

How it worksThe beacon transmits a one-way code that’s unique to your venue. When a user visits your venue with location services on their device turned on, their phone can use the beacon signal in order to understand that it’s visiting your store. The beacon itself does not collect or store any information. It only provides a helpful signal to your customers’ phones.

We may ask users who’ve visited your venue to contribute reviews, such as star ratings, answers to quick questions, photos, and more. Once enough of your visitors’ phones have detected visits to your store, we’re able to turn on aggregated features such as Popular times for your venue’s Place Page.

The data shown in these products is based on anonymous, aggregated visit statistics. It’s not possible to tie a particular visit back to a particular individual. We use industry best practices to ensure the privacy of individual users.

Of course, you can choose not to participate after receiving a beacon. This won’t affect your business or change how it currently shows up on Google. But by setting up your beacon, you’ll be able to take advantage of a wide range of location-enabled features like real-time Popular times and visitor reviews.

Anyone else receive one of these?

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I have not and news to me and good news to me. Looks like they are still trying to connect things.

Sr. Refresher

Accuracy of Location DetectionBeacon – Beacon is an indoor positioned transmitter, which uses Bluetooth Low energy (BLE) to sense proximity of a customer and broadcast one-way information to his smartphone or tablet. A Bluetooth beacon device transmits a unique ID number that can be read by any Bluetooth receiver. The signal is received by a mobile app, which activates the location specific information on the smartphone. Beacons transmit radio waves, which can penetrate physical barriers like walls and pillars. Beacons can work under difficult radio frequency conditions too and can therefore establish a customer’s location within four feet of accuracy. For a Beacon to work, the Bluetooth signal on a consumer’s mobile phone must be turned on.

WiFi – WiFi is a wireless LAN (Local Area Network) technology that allows two or more electronic devices to network together using the ISM radio band. To identify location information, these devices try to triangulate the location of a customer by measuring parameters such as MAC addresses and SSID. Since WiFi technology does not rely only on proximity of consumers, it is not as effective as Beacons when it comes to micro locationing. WiFi signals cannot penetrate through walls or any type of solid object. The customer needs to be in direct line of site with the WiFi device to receive ads.For WiFi to work, a customer’s mobile phone must have the WiFi network enabled on his phone.

Inference – Functioning of both technologies rely on features that are a part of every mobile phone but WiFi unlike Beacons is less locationally accurate.

Ease of User AccessibilityBeacon – It is a misconception that beacons can transmit data only to iPhones. This is particularly because beacons have become synonymous with iBeacons. Beacons in general respond to both Android and Apple mobile phones. However, both these platforms require mandatory installation of an app. Beacons are not designed to deliver proximity experiences without an app. In case, a customer does not have the dedicated app of a service or business installed on his mobile device, no transmission of information will take place.

WiFi – WiFi is compatible with all smartphones. Unlike beacons, WiFi technology totally bypasses the need for an app. It can send information, coupons, promotional offers and discounts directly to all mobile phones. The customer does not need to have an app open or running in the background to receive content. To push hyperlocal content, all that is needed is an active internet connection.

Inference – Not limited to users with dedicated apps, WiFi is a better choice to expand the reach of your marketing activity.

Deployment CostsBeacon – Beacons are inexpensive and are priced as low as $30 per unit. Although inexpensive, there is definitely a need for deployment of dedicated devices. Despite its affordability, businesses have had poor experiences with it. In order to tweak its settings, each sensor had to be manually adjusted with a scanner. Also, it is known to be effective when multiple beacons are strategically deployed – this automatically increases the cost of deployment. A separate platform is required for management of all deployed beacons, thereby hiking up the cost further. Beacons are battery operated, which need to be frequently changed.

WiFi – WiFi, unlike beacons, is usually a necessary part of every setup. This allows businesses to leverage their existing WiFi device without having to rely on the installation of any additional hardware infrastructure. In fact, your WiFi system ceases to be an IT expense and becomes a revenue generation channel. However, the WiFi device is connected to the main power source and will be non-functional during a power outage.

Inference – Using beacons will incur new costs and its maintenance will incur additional costs.

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Getting Refreshed

Everyone car dealer will have one, I hope they buy from me when I finish my project - wait till you hear! I got wind of beacons many years back and was invited to attend a Master Class held by Gimbal, an iBeacon manufacturer, among the first. It was way over my head , real coders were there, but the venue was in NYC, fascinating, met some really very smart entrepreneurs, who shared what they were building with these beacons. Wow. There was a heavy focus for retail, and venues. I met CEO's of many of the beacon companies. But the reality I left with and important fact, was that in order for an iBeacon to work, there needs to be an APP associated with it. So as a car dealer, or any business, if you have no app, it can be less useful, if at all. Apps are not cheap. I don't think car dealers need an app, maybe a mega dealer. Until Google stepped in a few years back, it changed the beacon protocol and introduced something called the Physical Web and a new type of beacon called Eddystone. I have several iterations.

The Eddystone Beacon is probably what you as a car dealer will want. And with this protocol, for iphone users, they currently have to be using chrome, has Physical Web services and location turned on. For most new Android users, location must be on.

I have a future entity called DEALERBLE (Dealer Bluetooth Low Energy) in dev stage, I've been so busy it's one of several projects I barely get to. What I propose to do folks, is show you something you didn't know exist, and give you an unlimited flow of leads , when it's set up right. The beacons themselves are cheap, less than $75 for the best. This is my idea: You take an Eddystone beacon and you program it to send a short URL, up to 50 meters out your building, of a special offer. We have 20,000 cars pass within 30 meters every day, as do many dealers. Your passer bys, walkins, and on premise folks could get a notification on their phones, and if they allow the notification, and accept, they will go immediately to your splash or landing page telling them how lucky they are. You integrate the offer with simple texting and you just discovered the coolest way to connect.

As a dealer, we issue oil change coupons, lease offers, trade bonus, free appraisal and are measuring at this time. All data will obviously be confidential, but you get the gist of what the Eddystone Beacon can do. The big difference, and it's a huge one, is that an iBeacon needs and associated app for it to work, and an Eddystone Beacon developed by google does not, and by transmitting a short URL to a short distance, you can quickly surmise over time enough people will see the offer, but with privacy Android and iPhones has proper security where these will not pester people. Its a fact of life now.

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Noob

This is my idea: You take an Eddystone beacon and you program it to send a short URL, up to 50 meters out your building, of a special offer. We have 20,000 cars pass within 30 meters every day, as do many dealers. Your passer bys, walkins, and on premise folks could get a notification on their phones, and if they allow the notification, and accept, they will go immediately to your splash or landing page telling them how lucky they are. You integrate the offer with simple texting and you just discovered the coolest way to connect.

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Hey Chris - I think you're definitely on to something. We're working on pretty much the same thing. It started off with our loyalty program clients asking for a simple way to track members who attended special events (New model intro, car care clinics, etc.) so they could earn rewards for attending, and we're now in the process of adding the ability to track showroom and service drive traffic (both internally and drive-by) to send special offers, present vehicle info, display a greeting specific to the customer on a waiting room monitor, etc. We also believe Eddystone is the best way to go - but we're considering iBeacon support as well. Wish you luck with your project! Let me know if you want to discuss how we can partner/collaborate - or if you just want to bounce ideas off each other.

Jeff Kershner, the DealerRefresh team columnist and its experienced community of automotive professionals offer advice and insight gained from years in the industry. Through articles, posts, threads and opinions the DealerRefresh community provides valuable knowledge for any level at the dealership. We would be honored to have you join our our growing community.